Press TV: We are seeing more people come together to protest the killing of the Shias in Zaria and the release of Sheikh Zakzaky, yet it seems to be falling on deaf ears?

Barrett: Well it is right. We have seen this kind of thing before.

Last January one of the biggest massacres in the history of Nigeria and indeed of much of the world happened at exactly the same moment as the attacks in Paris on Charlie Hebdo magazine, and the world was inundated with the killing of perhaps a little over a dozen people in Paris while thousands have been massacred in Nigeria and there was virtually no comment.

It does seem that white lives matter far more than [dark skin] lives and we are seeing the same from now and again as Sheikh Zakzaky has been apparently shot multiple times, taken into custody. Many of the people who were shot in this massacre because that is what it was, it was a premeditated massacre, they were given no medical treatment. This is an outrage. Many hundreds of people have been murdered by the Nigerian military. It is clear that this was a provocation. It was not some sort of legitimate self-defense in terms of a plot, an alleged plot against the army leader.

On the contrary, we have reports that the military surrounded these mosques and compounds, fired into them and that is the provocation that led people to create a barricade to try to prevent the military from coming in and killing more people. And they (the army) escalated the situation and came in with overwhelming force and just massacred men, women and children indiscriminately. It is an utter and complete outrage and the world needs to sit up and take notice. Nigeria should be sanctioned and I do not know if that is going to happen though because again we are living in a world in which there is a profound racism, a profound sentiment in the minds of the elites that rule the West that the rich white Western people’s lives matter but the lives of ordinary peaceful people in Nigeria who were murdered by their own government in the hundreds or thousands do not even matter.

Press TV: Well why do you think this issue is not being brought up in the UN Security Council?

Barrett: That is a great question. Again the United Nations is really not a democratic representative body in terms of representing the people of the world. It is really a top-down organization.

The real power rests with the Security Council which is tightly controlled by the most powerful nations on earth which are in fact owned by the international bankster cabal based in London, Tel Aviv and New York and these people really do not care about the lives of ordinary people at all, much less the lives of ordinary people in Africa.

The United Nations is supposed to have a mandate to take on human rights issues but once again they are averting their eyes from a situation that is crying out for justice.

Press TV: And how about this story and how is being portrayed and it is not even being portrayed that is the sad thing, it is not even being broadcasted on any mainstream media, what happens to people in Nigeria, what happens to the Shia minority there?

Barrett: That is right. We have had endless concocted stories – many of them completely fabricated – of human rights abuses, real and alleged in places like Libya and now Syria.

What we just saw in Nigeria was vastly worse than anything that the governments of places like Libya and Syria have done, marching on a peaceful religious group and just murdering hundreds and hundreds of people indiscriminately for no reason. Yet we are told in the West that we have this R2P responsibility to protect, meaning that the West has to go and bomb any countries that try to maintain an independent foreign policy and refuse to accept their vassal status. Those countries are destroyed under the pretence of protecting human rights, while these much greater human rights abuses in places like Nigeria and indeed what the Saudis are doing in Yemen and in various other examples around the world, Kashmir and of course Palestine, these are largely ignored or downplayed. And this situation that is going to have to stop.

Eventually the alternative media outlets like Press TV and the rest of the genuinely independent alternative media is slowly but truly waking people up. We cannot accept these double standards anymore, this hypocrisy. We need real human rights and every human being has equal value. All lives need to count.

He also has appeared many times on Fox, CNN, PBS and other broadcast outlets, and has inspired feature stories and op-eds in the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Chicago Tribune, and other leading publications.

Dr. Barrett has taught at colleges and universities in San Francisco, Paris, and Wisconsin; where he ran for Congress in 2008. He currently works as a nonprofit organizer, author, and talk radio host.

Comments Closed

3 COMMENTS

My sincere sympathies to the victims of this massacre, and their families.

Kevin, you look like you might be old enough to remember Biafra, the Nigerian Civil War in which the army killed tens of thousands of people, mostly Ebo but also of the “river tribes”. Everyone knew the oil companies were backing the Nigerian Army in that slaughterhouse, but of course nothing was done.

So, with regard to this latest outrage, the question you don’t seem to be answering in this article, or even asking, is the age-old “cui bono?” Is it the oil companies again, or are the Zionists promoting this massacre of Shia in an attempt to provoke Iran into doing something that might be used as an excuse to void the JCPOA?

“Word on the street” is that the same rogues behind fake terror in NYC/London/Paris/”ISIS” etc. are also behind Boko Haram and other corrupt manifestations of Nigerian politics/military. Not sure if it’s a provocation aimed at Iran…more likely the NWO types are afraid of the Sheikh’s potential to rally Nigeria against the Empire.

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